CITY ROOM; Sculpture From World Trade Center Gets a Bath but Needs a Home

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

Published: September 8, 2012

The volunteer maintenance workers arrived with water buckets and plenty of rags. As golden evening light filled Battery Park, where the 'Sphere' has stood since 2002, they bathed and gently swabbed the sculpture's base. A parks enforcement patrol car drove by a couple of times, stopping once for several minutes. But no one stepped out.">

In the belief that it ought to appear as if someone cared about the city's second-most-prominent 9/11 memorial - Fritz Koenig's "Sphere for Plaza Fountain" sculpture from the original World Trade Center - a guerrilla cleaning crew took matters into its own gloved hands on Thursday.

The volunteer maintenance workers arrived with water buckets and plenty of rags. As golden evening light filled Battery Park, where the 'Sphere' has stood since 2002, they bathed and gently swabbed the sculpture's base. A parks enforcement patrol car drove by a couple of times, stopping once for several minutes. But no one stepped out.

Maybe the officers did not object to seeing four-foot-long streaks of pigeon droppings being erased from the curving bronze forms. Perhaps they did not mind that someone had finally picked up and bagged a dead pigeon that had become part of the stony landscape around the sculpture. Maybe they figured, "Hey, someone remembered the 11th anniversary is coming up."

Whatever the case, the constabulary offered no resistance.

That allowed the little band to finish its job, under the direction of Michael Burke, whose brother, Capt. William F. Burke Jr. of Engine Company 21, was killed on Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Burke is the unofficial leader of a campaign to place the "Sphere" in the 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center site, and to keep it on public display in the interim.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has said it agrees with Mr. Burke that the "Sphere" should come back to the site. But the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, headed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, does not want the sculpture for a plaza that is already designed and a museum collection that is already assembled. The Port Authority has no power to compel the memorial and museum to accept the work.

No one in charge appears to be in any hurry to end this impasse. To judge from the condition of the "Sphere," they can scarcely be bothered with routine maintenance, either. So it was left to Mr. Burke and his confederates to do a little fixing up before the anniversary.As twilight fell, the little band seemed gratified by its good deed, though they despaired that they couldn't reach the globe because it is so high off the ground. Mr. Burke said Captain Burke would not have been fazed.

"My brother would have called in Ladder 10," he said, referring to the nearest fire company, "and just had them spray it down."

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.

PHOTO: Volunteers including Michael Burke, at right, brother of a Fire Department captain, William F. Burke Jr., killed on Sept. 11, cleaned ''Sphere for Plaza Fountain'' in Battery Park on Thursday. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID W. DUNLAP/THE NEW YORK TIMES)

The volunteer maintenance workers arrived with water buckets and plenty of rags. As golden evening light filled Battery Park, where the 'Sphere' has stood since 2002, they bathed and gently swabbed the sculpture's base. A parks enforcement patrol car drove by a couple of times, stopping once for several minutes. But no one stepped out.">